Communications teams need to loosen their grip on social media Photograph: Mediacolor's/Alamy

Last week WeLoveLocalGovernment posted a fascinating blog on Monmouthshire's experience of allowing staff across the council to use social media. Both the article and the comments which it provoked highlighted the fact that using social media means challenging the primacy of the council communications department.

Is that the right way to go? And what are the risks?

Twenty years ago too few councils saw communications as central to their priorities, and fewer still had a communications director on the executive team. But in the following years council comms went through a period of rapid professionalisation.

Authorities got wise to the need to have clear, consistent messages, and contact with the media became more sophisticated but also more controlled. Heads of communications began to metamorphose into directors, and Derbyshire county council even appointed a former communications head as chief executive.

But there were also the beginnings of another change. As well as doing more talking, councils began to do more listening. Polling, citizens juries, feedback through municipal newspapers and the like were indications of councils becoming increasingly sensitive, and receptive, to voices and views in the community. Engagement – with local people, businesses and other interest groups – became a key purpose of communications.

Social media threatens the controlled messages and unleashes the conversations.

Communications staff could be forgiven for being horrified at the thought of officers from across the council tweeting, stumbling, poking and writing on walls. The prospect is that carefully honed statements put out through a central team staffed by communications professionals will be replaced by an electronic blizzard of disconnected, poorly constructed, unchecked, error strewn (or even worse, truth-strewn) messages, fired into cyberspace with little appreciation of the consequences.

Monmouthshire's riposte to this doomsday scenario is to trust its staff to reflect its values – one of which is openness. This hints that a council taking this route needs to be confident and united, with a consistent approach to its citizens across all its services. So the Angleseys of the local government world should attend to other priorities first.

Social media demands a new sort of conversation which requires central communications to loosen its grip.

A publicly accountable organisation now needs to have personal relations over social media through a multitude of sources if it is going to build authentic contact. The role of the communications team is still key, both in continuing its main role but also in monitoring the council's activity and reputation on social media and helping staff make good use of it without stifling and controlling that use. It also needs to champion social media and help managers and politicians hold their nerve when the inevitable problems arise from this new approach.

There are great benefits to be had in terms of staff motivation.

Employees previously hidden from view will be able to have direct contact with local people and, as Monmouthshire has discovered, they are far more likely to send you a compliment than abuse. For so many council staff there is nothing more motivating that an expression of personal gratitude for a job well done. That is probably the richest reward from opening up social media across the authority.

For all but a handful of councils, the biggest mistake they can make with social media is inaction, and the biggest risk is appearing out of touch and increasingly irrelevant.

Social media has an extraordinary amount to offer local government, in terms of both improving services and getting much closer to individual citizens and groups. Listening, responsive, open, caring, learning, engaged, quick – these are all attributes of a good council which social media can enhance. And at virtually no cost.

Richard Vize is contributing editor of the Guardian local government network. Click here to follow him on Twitter

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